Reprieve
by alwaysaspencer
Summary: Post-Radley, Spencer still needs Toby as her safe place to land. Set at the beginning of 4A, between 4x04 and 4x05.


It's hard for Spencer to turn her brain off but for once she wants a reprieve, a space to breathe. Her parents and Melissa are in Philly for the night and she can't remember the last time her house felt _safe _to her. Tonight, it feels less echoing and empty, less _lonely _because there is the glorious sight of Toby on her bed. Everything about him is stripped down and pared away. Arousal flares low in her belly at the look of pure reverence and trust on his face and the way he waits and _gives _himself up to her control. Spencer can already feel the wetness between her thighs as she walks towards him and leads him gently to the red armchair by the window. The exact same spot as their first time.

Spencer remembers how all her rules about waiting and the perfect first time had flown out of her mind. It didn't matter anymore, only that Toby was _here_ for now and she wouldn't let him go again. She's the girl who remembers her locker combinations all the way back to fifth grade, information and knowledge accumulating in her brain with ease. So it's with absolute clarity that she recalls the way he whispered, "Are you sure?" with so much care because he _wouldn't _do to her what Jenna had done to him. He knew that neither would she and all the trust he had in her filled Spencer with a conviction and rightness that settled into her bones.

"Yes," she had said, a litany of _yes _thrumming through her like the singing of blood in her veins. As he carried her and lowered her onto her bed, laughter had bubbled up inside her. It was uncontainable, exultant and she had felt just like any other girl in love. But a Hastings always goes for what they want so she reached up for him with her hands and her mouth as he crawled up the bed towards her. She remembers, light, so much light washing over her in waves as her body flooded with pleasure and she was _flying_.

It is with this same single-mindedness that Spencer now kisses away the shadows and unshed tears around Toby's eyes. She is determined to make him feel better. His grief over his mother is a raw open wound, a present gift wrapped and delivered by A.

Spencer knows only too well A's devious moves. That Mona thought to break her apart using Toby and dangled him before her as a reward for betraying the girls. As if it was a clear-cut choice, him or _them._ The same choice she has to make now with Toby pleading with her to lie to her friends and keep his secret (and how can she not but do as he asks when she _sees _all of his naked pain?) It sits inside her uneasily alongside the constant worry about her girls: Hanna frantic about her mother, Em upset over her family, Aria trying so hard to forget Ezra by being with Jake. How could she be Spencer Hastings anymore when she had been so wrong about something so important? When the girls had relied on her to lead, to figure out their next move? She's meant to be the scary, smart one. In some way amidst the agony, it was a relief to be Not Spencer Hastings for a while.

Spencer settles on Toby now, straddling his hips and taking him inside her and _oh, _it is so different from her first time. She looms over him and a thrill of power and heady desire rushes down her spine. It is from this vantage point that she can survey the ruins of her innocence that had shattered the moment she saw Toby standing in her kitchen with the black hoodie and then again in the forest. Both times she had believed the worst. But he is _here _now, pressing open-mouthed kisses down her throat and he loves her, has always loved her. She needs _this, _she needs _him._ She runs her hand down the hard muscle of his chest, reveling in the warm solid realness of him and the feeling of him deep inside her that chases away the ghosts of Radley and the hurt and betrayal. It is in cataloguing every inch of Toby that she can push away the image of his dead body on the forest floor.

Toby presses his thumb over her clit in slow circles as if they have all the time in the world and she gasps out loud, opening herself up to him further. He's always been able to melt all her defences. She can feel it rising in her, surfacing in a great wave: all her desperate neediness that she tries to hide, the girl hungry for love. When the wave breaks, Toby is there to catch her, her safe place to land amidst the monsters and the horror of A and her family.

At last, they collapse onto her bed and Toby drags the covers up around them and curls around her. Tomorrow she will put on her armor and go out to wage battle for her girls but tonight, she leans into Toby's embrace, basking in his love and rests her head wearily against his shoulder.


End file.
